Zendesk Talk Troubleshooting Tips

All web-based software can experience performance issues relating to the connections and environment in which it operates. Existing system or connection issues may not be as noticeable during normal ticketing, but these issues can be much more pronounced with the additional demands of a telephony connection such as Zendesk Talk.

Connection issues with Zendesk Talk may cause a variety of problems that can be frustrating to diagnose. To help you deal with such issues, we have compiled a list of common troubleshooting steps to try first.

Please review the information below, and if you still have issues with your Zendesk Talk connections please submit a ticket to our customer service team support@zendesk.com.

Problems with Voice quality (delays, echoes, dropped calls)

Call Quality

Issues with Zendesk Talk call quality can sometimes be traced to a disruption of Twilio services, as this is the system handling our Talk connections. To determine the status of Twilio’s servers, please visit http://status.twilio.com/. If Twilio is experiencing a disruption of services, they will update this site with the status of the outage and an expectation of when regular service will resume.

If you have checked Twilio’s status, found it is operating normally, and are still experiencing connection issues, please review the ports on your network Firewall. Please verify that you have the following ports open with your network administrator:

TCP: 80, 443

Have your affected agents go to http://clientsupport.twilio.com/ and review the information there. This page will point to incompatibilities with your system setup or browser configuration.

Have your affected agents try another headset and microphone and review their sound card settings.

Have your affected agents try using another browser. Most browsers use WebRTC for connections with Zendesk Talk. If the issue is with Chrome, have them test their WebRTC using the tool here: https://apprtc.appspot.com/. Once there, right click and select “Un-mute.” If their microphone sound comes out of their speakers, they are using WebRTC and their microphone and speakers are working properly.

If you are still unable to determine the cause of your quality issues after following these troubleshooting steps, please submit a support request to support@zendesk.com. When you do so, please have an agent who is experiencing quality issues provide a screenshot from their system of the information at supportdetails.com. Please also provide any example tickets where call quality was an issue. This additional information is very useful.

Receiving an EC# error

EC# errors are often caused by your network or router configuration. They represent an issue with Zendesk Talk not having an adequate network connection. This can occur anywhere along the network, but often they are the result of local network limitations, or from a computer that does not meet the minimum requirements to make the connection. Please follow these steps to troubleshoot an EC# error:

Most browsers have now WebRTC enabled by default. Zendesk recommends you use a browser that supports WebRTC.

Review the WebRTC Port Requirements:

To use WebRTC, please ensure that the following ports are not blocked: TCP: port 80 and 443 UDP: all ports between 10,000 and 20,000

If you are still experiencing EC# errors after reviewing these troubleshooting steps, please send a support request to support@zendesk.com. When you do, please verify that you have the required ports open by sending a screenshot of your firewall and router settings showing these open ports.

Zendesk Talk resetting to Offline status

Refreshing your page will cause the agent to be set to unavailable for Chat or Talk, and the agent will need to manually reset themselves to become available. For now we recommend you do not refresh your page in your browser when you wish to be available for calls or chat.

Numbers and billing

Billing a spoke account for Zendesk Talk with multi-brand

With the current multi-branding setup, a credit card cannot be added to a spoke account. Billing is normally done through the hub account, and the spokes are sponsored. Because our billing system does not allow a credit card on spoke accounts for use with Talk, you will need to purchase credits in advance by contacting your Account Manager in our Sales team. Please see Talk pricing here.

"Your Zendesk Talk number will expire in 7 days"

Zendesk Talk reclaims unused phone numbers after 60 days of no activity. If your phone number hasn’t been used within that time, you will receive an email notifying you that your number will expire in 7 days. If you are still using this Talk number, you can prevent the deactivation by simply calling your Zendesk Talk number. Any call activity will prevent the number from being deactivated. However, if you haven’t used the number in 60 days you may want to consider canceling this support channel given the low amount of use.

No button to upload custom greetings

If you want to upload a custom greeting for use with Zendesk Talk, you will first need to click on Record, under the greeting settings. This will then prompt you to either record a file or upload your own.

in the suggested troubleshooting link https://apprtc.appspot.com/, there is no right click available. Also that tip is not clear. Are you saying use a browser other than chrome? Or test chrome at the appspot link? What if no sound comes out of the speakers?

Happy to help with that! We're going to update that section. In the mean time, go to https://networktest.twilio.com/ and run the two tests on the Twilio Client screen, then click on the network tab and run those two tests. If those all check out fine and you're still having Talk issues, please submit a ticket to support@zendesk.com so that we can jump in and help get Talk working for you!

For one of my agents using chrome, the Call/Answer button doesn't do anything when clicked. No error message or anything, just unresponsive. It does work on firefox (though Chrome is our preferred browser). The odd thing is for some other agents using chrome the buttons do function correctly. Can't figure it out, not a firewall issue.

Have your agent try using Chrome in an incognito window. This usually is going to be a good indicator of a defect of your browser or if it is an issue related to caching issue or browser extension.

If it is working in the Chrome incognito window, have your agent clear cache and cookies and try again on his tab. If this issue is still present, have this agent disable all extensions on the browser and try it again switching on extension after extension. This would allow you to see what extension would be conflicting with the Talk experience. If none of those works, there is a more drastic version of this solution which would be to reset your Chrome browser totally, this would factory reset the browser and get rid of anything impeding with Talk: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/3296214?hl=en

I hope this would help. If you are still having issues, please submit a ticket to support@zendesk.com and we can go through more troubleshooting steps together.

My reps and I have Talk set to forward calls to our cell phones. When we answer, we hear the recording asking us to press a button to accept the call (I don't want calls going to personal voicemail). About half the time, the call never connects, even if we press a button or #. How can we resolve this? Rebooting the phone doesn't help. The call does roll to another associate, but that's not a preferred outcome.

Same issues as those described above: poor line quality, calls dropping, calls that don't allow us to answer, and a time lag that means we end up talking over customers. I would appreciate any advise on how to resolve all of these!

We will most likely need to take a look at a couple of call examples to determine what the cause is here. I'm going to generate a ticket on your behalf for our Customer Advocacy team to take a look at. You'll receive an email shortly stating your ticket has been created.